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'The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.' -Friedrich Nietzsche

'Before the wicked ones were punished for their sins, before the new Trinity has graced us with their holy light, there was complete, utter darkness. God, who gazed upon the battleground of good and evil, was displeased with man's way of keeping within his sins and follies, and so rose from his throne to wield, once more, his sword of creation.

And God said, 'Let man receive the gift of wisdom, intellect, and virtue.' His song brought forth the first of the Trinity. From the light emerged the first Angel of Justice, whose mind is sharper than cold steel, second to none except the Holy Father.

And God said, 'Let man receive the gift of love, kindness, and companionship.' His song brought forth the second of the Trinity. From the light emerged the second Angel of Justice, whose heart is purer than gold, second to none except the Holy Father.

And God said, 'Let man receive the gift of the will, strength, and energy.' His song brought forth the third of the Trinity. From the light emerged the third Angel of Justice, whose body is tougher than diamond, second to none except the Holy Father.

God looked upon his new Trinity and smiled. Sending them down to the battleground of good and evil, the Angels of Justice took to their work, restoring balance, spreading the good word through their actions.

For seven days, they learned the ways of man. For seven days, they suffered the cruelty of man. For seven days, they fought against the wicked. And finally, for seven days, they delivered justice against the wicked.

Then in the next seven days, the Angels of Justice rested and basked in the adoration and adulation of their worshipers, for in their wisdom, they knew that they had completed but one cycle of many …' - Book of George Extract from The New Trinity Bible, First Edition, 1989.

Prologue: Wail of Sirens

Townsville. The Outskirts. Lombardi Family Estate.

{String corrupted} 1989 {String corrupted}

The sky was overcast, darker than a normal night. A final snowstorm was blanketing everything in whiteness as if winter itself knew it was dying as it had gone into labor to birth spring. Snow fell in greater volumes. The fog hung a thin curtain over everything as if it knew that everyone on site could not afford to be distracted.

General Blackwater gripped the loudhailer in his hand as if he was holding tightly to an M1 Garand in the middle of World War II. He was completely decked out in next-generation SWAT gear, all the better to shield his important life from gunshots and shrapnel. In a way, the place and time he found himself in was just as pivotal a moment as the last days of World War II, back when he was in Berlin. For decades, Townsville had suffered, and the past few weeks had been hell for everyone, as the body of the city became overcame with fever as if to kill off the viruses and bacteria and parasites that had been infecting it for far too long.

He was seated on top of his command humvee, behind a machine-gun mounted on top of the roof. Around him were more humvees, off-white with the shield of the USDO - the United States Defence Organization - printed on their doors. There were even a few M60 Pattons, surplus main battle tanks acquired from the US military on the cheap, still fresh from purchase with the army green of the war machines' previous affiliation. Although outdated, they were nothing the criminal mobs in the city could hope to ever match, as even the Foundation - a terrorist organization that had been locked in a secret war with the USDO for decades - had never fielded such firepower before. It might seem like overkill, but with what they were facing - enhanced individuals capable of great feats of strength and speed and strange abilities - General Blackwater believed it was worth the financial and logistical cost.

Accompanying the USDO was the TPD - the Townsville Police Department - represented by dozens of blue police cruisers, SWAT vans, and buses. Squads of USDO SWAT soldiers and TPD SWAT officers were swarming forward, taking positions on the front, getting ready to storm the mansion before them.

They were at the Lombardi Family Estate. Everything they had done - months of hard work, sacrifice and losses sometimes severe - had led them up to this point when they could finally cut off the head of the snake.

"This is the USDO!" General Blackwater bellowed into his loudhailer. "We have you surrounded! Disarm yourselves and surrender peacefully or we will be forced to use overwhelming force!"

Silence. There was not even a single mobster at one of the many windows. Not even a slight movement. There were no gunshots. It was all too anti-climactic, and General Blackwater knew why. Climbing down from the side of his command humvee, the huge bear of a man landed on the snow heavily - he was sixty-something but his age wasn't showing, thanks to a combination of next-generation medicine and good genetics.

B-47, B-48, and B-49 had beaten them to it. He'd known the moment he saw through his binoculars the giant double doors of the mansion. They were flung wide open and left ajar. One of the twin oak giants was even knocked off its hinges. Like the gates into a fortress, if that was the case, then the fortress was likely breached.

"I'm scared for them," a familiar voice said from behind him, with shivering voice, likely from the cold. General Blackwater turned around. It was Professor Utonium, who was still in his lab coat, which wasn't exactly the best thing to wear in winter, even if the winter was nearing its end.

'How far the great Utonium has fallen', General Blackwater could only think. Months ago, he had been Head of Research for the USDO, but ever since accidentally creating B-47, B-48 and B-49, he had voluntarily taken it upon himself to raise the subjects of Project Powerpuff, demoting himself to a Field Researcher and dedicating himself to them. It was clear why the once-powerful man would do such a thing. Being a widower who had lost his only daughter too, Professor Utonium had instantly taken to the three subjects of Project Powerpuff. Was it love? Or simply a path to redemption? General Blackwater could never quite understand the man simply because they were two very different people.

"After all they've been through… After all, they've been put through," Professor Utonium continued, almost mumbling. He didn't look much better himself - and it was obvious why. It wasn't exactly a cakewalk for the polymath either. "They shouldn't have to suffer another second more. It's all my fault."

"You need to stop treating them like little girls. They're far more than that," General Blackwater declared gruffly. "They can take care of themselves."

"I can still remember a time when they couldn't, and it's not that far from now," Professor Utonium said, his voice shaking just as much from worry and fear, as it was from the cold. "I still remember it like it was yesterday when they couldn't even talk when they were still in diapers. Sometimes I wish they had to grow up like normal little kids."

"Do you want that for yourself, or them?" General Blackwater questioned the scientist as he pulled an assault rifle out of his vehicle. An XM4 Carbine - latest tech that even the US military did not have. In fact, there were many things that the USDO had that the US military could only dream of, and with the breakthroughs they'd been making - thanks largely to Professor Utonium and his research into Chemical X and its predecessors - they were fast approaching territories of technology that used to be science fiction. If their latest Project Powerpuff subjects weren't counted.

"I care nothing for myself," Professor Utonium contended. "Not after what I've done. I want the Girls to be happy - it's all I want. Sometimes, I'd even think that… They might even do better without me."

"Don't be stupid, Upton," the general growled at the professor. The irony that he was telling a leading intellectual that wasn't lost on him, though some would argue that he himself was an intellect in his own right, just that he specialized in the art of war. "If I can see that those three little kids and you need each other, then it shouldn't be a question for you too. The four of you are like a tightly-knit squad. One of you can't function without the other. You're going to have to learn how to let them go, however - eventually. Just not right now."

"That's funny, coming from a control freak like you," the professor retorted. He didn't like how the general was lecturing him. The General Blackwater, who wouldn't hesitate to deploy the Girls over and over again to achieve whatever objectives he had in mind, with little regard for the Girls' well-being. He hated the man for that. "I'm going in there with you. Ready when you are."

"The hell you are! You know how important you are to the Girls and the USDO!" General Blackwater refused.

"You're going to need a doctor, Blackwater. The Girls might need a doctor," Professor Utonium countered. "I've heard about what the Amoeba Boys have accomplished, felt it personally, and we've all fallen for it. They have something up their sleeves, I just know it. I'm afraid for the Girls."

"Fine. You've always had your way, Upton, and so you will this time," General Blackwater said. "You prepared?"

"Always. For my Girls," the professor said. He reached below his lab coat and unholstered a pistol. Once upon a time, it'd been a danger to himself and the Girls. Now, it might just be the thing that could save them. General Blackwater scanned him from head to toe. The professor had a bullet-resistant vest on as well.

"Just keep your head down. The Girls may not go down easy, but one bullet to your brain and they'd definitely go down crying," General Blackwater said. He then turned to his captains - and he had brought in the finest and most veteran of them all, those who had been with the USDO when it was still the Organization and had been on numerous missions going back up a decade or more. "Let's move into the hot zone! Brick, you and Sierra-Tango-One on me! PTF, give me an Alpha-Two before the rest of us head in. Butch, lead Sierra-Tango-2 and Sierra-Tango-3 and back us up. Boomer, you and Sierra-Tango-Four are on reserve in case the surrounding forces need reinforcement."

20 Minutes Earlier…

A tri-colored streak of light raced across the sky of Townsville, screaming towards the outskirts of it, towards a prominent building occupying many acres on the boundary between urban civilization and the wild countrysides. Far behind them, the wail of sirens and the red and blue flashing lights of authority shouted the USDO and police's intentions to catch up. It would be a long time before they do. Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup had grown strong over the months, and they were close to breaking the sound barrier by the time they were homing in on their object of revenge. Their light shines ever brighter, the 'X-energy contrails' the result of waste energy expelled as light through the burning of Chemical X in their blood.

They were mad, really mad. Even Bubbles, the sweetest and most forgiving of the three, wore a frown on her face, one that advertised only deadly consequences. The memory of what had happened was still fresh on their minds, and they had too many bad things to remember, whether they'd occurred just hours ago or months ago. It was time to make sure it wouldn't happen again, that they wouldn't have to remember anymore bad events in the foreseeable future.

They didn't wait when they got to the mansion. They plough through the double-doors of the old mansion with their shoulders, their 'sister-sense' allowing such synchronized feats at such critical moments. It was only when they were inside that they stopped… Briefly. They were greeted by a Grand Foyer with two great, curved stairwells leading up to a second floor. The stairwells were filled with what were essentially rows upon rows of firing squads, composed of members of the numerous gangs in Townsville, now all under the leadership of the Lombardi. The Italians, Sicilians, Russians, Chechens, Jewish Mafia, Black Mafia… The diversity of criminals had only served to remind the Girls, Blossom most of all, of their past mistakes.

As if as a show of force, more men showed up behind the banisters of the second-floor corridors overlooking the main hall, cocking their weapons. The familiar trench coats and fedora of the typical American and Italian gangsters were most familiar, with the Yakuza in their smart business suits and the flashy and trendy rugged look of the Chinese Triads accompanying them. Even Blossom would be lying if she were to say that she wasn't intimidated - she had fought dozens before, not hundreds. Bubbles was outright terrified, her forehead already streaking with sweat, her eyes betraying that fear. Only Buttercup remained optimistic, though that word would be lost on her. She flashed a killer smile to match the mob's, ready to do battle with them.

Three men stood waiting for them in the center of the grand foyer, one burly and smoking a cigar, exuding the confidence of a leader, the next slim but looking slimy, and a third who was short but looked like he had far more up his sleeves than he could physically pack. Bossman, the bruiser type, was armed with a Tommy-gun that had been in the Lombardi crime family for forty years, passed down from one crime boss to the next. Slim had an M16, likely bought from a corrupted army officer, and Junior had a pair of Uzis. They looked human, but the three Girls knew exactly what they were underneath.

"If it isn't the Powerpuff Girls," Bossman greeted Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, who glared at him with a kind of look that could kill. "Are you three here to kill us or get your manicure done?" Slim and Junior sniggered at the remark, and it'd pushed the Girls' buttons. Hard. Blossom gritted her teeth while a tear streaked down Bubbles' cheek as she, too, stared daggers at the heads of the Lombardi family. Buttercup alone remained stoic, her killer smile disappearing.

"We were friends back then, don't you remember?" Bossman continued and turned to his fellow Amoeba Boys. "Right Slim, Junior?" They acknowledged their leader's words mischievously.

"We were never friends," Blossom growled at Bossman as she stomped forward, who only smiled dismissively at her. Blossom, being a little girl, even if enhanced, could only bite harder than she bark, and the Amoeba Boys knew it.

"Funny, 'course I remember us lunching together, not too long ago," Bossman revealed and his flankers giggled, spiting the Girls and they knew it. Blossom clenched her fists harder, so hard that she could feel her nails digging into her palm. "Yeah, you've even slept in my bed. It was awfully comfy, ain't it? You looked cute when you're asleep, by the way."

Blossom felt like she could explode - she had never felt such anger, betrayal, and shame in her entire life before. It was all because of the Amoeba Boys that the city had turned against them, the Powerpuff Girls. Visibly shaking, Blossom could feel tears of rage streaming down her cheeks as she closed her eyes, counting backward from ten to zero, just like how Daddy taught her. And it worked. Sort of. She opened her eyes.

"Oh, we remember alright. It was a mistake," Blossom said as she took another step forward. The room resounded with the metal clacking of guns getting cocked, ready to shoot. "We're taking you in-"

"-Amoeba boys!" Bubbles completed Blossom's sentence for her. She had stepped up next to her. Buttercup too, who was shaking with anticipation.

"Can I kill them? I'd like to kill them," Buttercup said, no longer taking pains to hide her lust for blood and violence.

"No, Buttercup! Haven't you learned anything yet?" Blossom chided her wayward sister. "We can't be like them! Isn't it bad enough the last time!?"

"Yeah, Blossom, keep your bitch sister on a leash," Bossman mocked the opposing leader. "You should know how. You've learned from the best. You've learned from me. I sure kept a leash on you." At this, Slim and Junior laughed again, already assailing the Girls before any shots were fired. The Girls were taken aback by the foul language, too. Professor Utonium had taught them better.

"Haha, nice one, boss. 'bitch sister', haha," Junior, less important next to his biggest brother-in-crime, laughed.

"You'll be eating soap for the rest of your time in prison, Amoeba Boys!" Blossom warned.

"We'll give you one more chance, Amoeba Boys!" Bubbles continued after Blossom.

"Drop your weapons or else!" Buttercup threatened, though her warning was less than genuine. She wanted a fight, and if the Amoeba Boys came quietly, there wouldn't be one. Not that she believed they would do so – even a 5-year-old could see that, and she wasn't too far from being one.

"Else what? You're going to fight me in that pretty little dress of yours?" Bossman Taunted again. "What? Isn't Mommy there to wash your little SWAT costume?"

Blossom knew that Bossman would set Buttercup off with that taunt. She immediately took hold of her by the arm when Buttercup launched forward.

"Lemme have him!" Buttercup screamed as she strained against Blossom's grasp. "I'll kill him!"

The Amoeba Boys weren't cowed by Buttercup's threat. Slim especially, since he had personally defeated and drowned Buttercup in seawater before. Blossom leaned closer to Buttercup. "Buttercup, stop," she whispered into her ear. "I think we'll have to fight them, but we do it my way."

"Well, are you three giving up or not?" Blossom said to the Amoeba Boys. Bossman stayed silent.

"Oh fine, you got me, I'm so scared," Bossman said sarcastically, before suddenly lowering his Tommy-gun and pointing it at Blossom. "How 'bout I give you my gun one bullet at a time, kiddo!? I'll decorate your pink dress with some shiny lead!"

"Buttercup, right! Bubbles, left!" Blossom screamed her orders, which were followed promptly by her sisters, who darted up into the air at high speeds, leaving behind a baby blue and light green trail behind them.

Bossman opened fire after that. Slim and Junior followed suit. Blossom knelt down on a knee and did a cross-block with her arms – better her arms than face and chest. A pink X-energy shell appeared before her. The stream of bullets did not let up immediately, and when she was hit by too many, her shell broke, and some had slipped past her arms, Blossom held on even as Bossman fulfilled his promise, and decorated her pink dress with some shiny lead. Bullets rained down from above as well, and Blossom knew that something had to be done about the weather.

The moment the torrent of bullets from the front let up, Blossom charged up her eyes, letting the heat build as her tears turned to steam, and within the space of a second, let off a twin beam of Chemical X enhanced heat beam. Sweeping the beams across the second floor, she'd forced the gangsters above to duck, scramble and run for cover, as she burned the ancient architecture with her rage.

Buttercup bowled into her side of the hall, into the gallery of men arrayed on the right stairwell. She was too fast, and even against a wall of bullets, relatively few had struck her. Dozens shredded her dress as she tackled several men at once. Getting up, she upper-cut a Russian gangster in the elbow when he pointed his pistol at her, shattering it. In a fluid motion, as half a dozen other bad guys were struggling to aim and shoot at her, Buttercup drove her foot into another man's chest, breaking every bone in it with a loud series of sickening crunches, pulverizing heart and lungs. This slowed her momentum, and soon, she could feel the angry sting of multiple assault weapons on her back, though the only thing hurt was her dress and psyche.

Whirling around, her eyes became red, as if in anger made manifest, and a pair of laser beams swept past a dozen gangsters. Half of them fell backward with deep lacerations through stomach or chest cavity, blood staining everything - the others collapsed where they were, with one of them holding his intestines before his eyes.

Bubbles on the left stairwell had circled around her fifty or so opponents instead, who fired into the air at her, but she was too fast that only a tiny fraction of the bullets had hit home. Zipping behind them, she had outmaneuvered the column of gun-toting gangsters and landed at the top of the stairs, most of whom were on lower steps and couldn't even see past their higher friends. Charging into the gangsters, she pushed them down the stairs, causing cascades of gangsters rolling down to the foot.

But not all of them were caught in the human waterfall. A Sicilian mafioso pointed his shotgun at Bubbles, but she pushed the gun out of the way before he could fire, mainly out of fear of the weapon, before punching him out and sending him tumbling down the stairs with his friends. Another Sicilian pointed a Scorpion submachine gun at her, but he was too close - he could only get a few shots off before she was right up his face, delivering a sucker punch at him and sending him rolling down with the rest of them.

Blossom charged towards the Amoeba Boys immediately after she had set fire to the entire second floor, but their sustained fire had slowed her down as she needed to cover her face. Backtracking, the leaders of the Lombardi crime family retreated towards a door between the hall's grand staircases, replaced by another group of gangsters, this time heavily armed with machine guns of various make meant for suppressing hundreds in a war.

Opening fire, they pushed Blossom back, before another Italian mobster came forward with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his shoulder, which Blossom noticed too late - when the rocket grenade was fired at her. All she could do was to throw her arms up in front of her once more, but she felt it in her shoulder.

An explosion resulted. Buttercup and Bubbles turned from where they were to look at their leader sister, but all they could see in her place was smoke. The machine gunners stopped while the gangster with his RPG began sticking a new rocket grenade in its tube. It was a bad mistake on their part. From the smoke, two red, glowing orbs appeared, before two heat rays, their paths made clearly visible by dust and smoke, shot at the gangsters who'd hurt her, tracing a path across several of them, burning them and knocking them out.

Buttercup returned her attention back to battle when it was apparent with a bullet bouncing off her skull that it wasn't over on her side. Flying towards the shooter, she smacked aside his pistol arm, sending the pistol flying across the hall, and gave him a multi-ton punch in the jaw. The sound of bones shattering and teeth scattering on the floor sent shivers of thrill and excitement up Buttercup's spine. Rebuilding her teeth collection, however, would have to come later as she could feel a spray of bullets down her back. Warping elsewhere with her near-sound-barrier speed of flight, she fired a well-placed laser eyebeam at her attacker, straight to his neck. The gangster was beheaded immediately, with his head bouncing down the steps. His body's hand had reached up to his neck, only to find that there nothing above the neck left, squirting blood. The body collapsed after that.

There were still more gangsters on Bubbles' side - she had merely sent half of them tumbling down the stairs like bowling pins in a party game. Flying backward, she surveyed the human terrain, which was when she could feel goosebumps.

Duranium.

One of the bad guys had it. Even as bullet rattled off her while she threw up her arms in self-defense, she searched them with her keen eyes for any sign of Duranium - after getting shot one too many times with it, she had developed some kind of sense for detecting it, as arcane as it sounded. Even her Dad couldn't fully explain it yet. That was when she saw it - something shimmering vaguely in the sniper rifle of one of the thugs as if the chamber of the gun was invisible.

Before she was prepared, the Duranium Thug fired his Girl-Killer shell. Bubbles burst with energy at the same time, throwing up a baby blue bubble of protection around her - a bit of an overkill, but she still remembered how she nearly died from a couple of Duranium bullets, and it wasn't pleasant.

The Duranium shell punched through her light blue Chem-X shield regardless, burying itself in her chest, with blood spraying out. In response, she sucked in a prodigious amount of air, and let loose a deafening scream, breaking any glass windows that were intact, blowing eardrums and knocking the remaining gangsters she was fighting down.

Blossom, in the meantime, emerged out of the smoke after that like a jet airplane, her dress still on fire, charging into her attackers. She'd only held back just enough not to kill them, first knocking men into the cold, hard walls of the cold, hard mansion they were defending, then beating the snot out of the rest, who could only panic and fire wild shots at the indestructible girl at close quarters, doing absolutely nothing but enraging the red-head who was both literally and figuratively on fire. She took the last man standing by the collar and threw him to the ceiling, knocking the wind out of him as he crashed into it chest-first. The fall did the rest and knocked him unconscious - and possibly breaking his back. Blossom could hear a sickening crack, but she cared little because of how much pain they'd caused her - both during and before this battle.

Panting and shaking, Blossom finally landed, before heading back to the center to see her sisters. She patted down the fire that was still burning through her pink dress, realizing in dismay that the top-left quarter of it was completely burnt off, leaving the dress hanging only by a blackened shoulder and the belt. Half the remaining fabric was a sooty black, leaving very little pink left. The rest of her dress was pockmarked with holes; she couldn't just see it, she could feel it as it was colder than before. The undergarment covering her chest survived, albeit singed with spots of black and brown and holes as well. One of her socks was similarly burned up, turning it from a knee-high sock to a calf-length sock. Both of her socks were a mix of white, brown and black. Her red bow was singed, and one of its ears was slightly disfigured, tattered. Queasy and lethargic from having expended some of her X energy, she searched the right staircase for Buttercup to find her approaching a wounded Italian gangster dragging himself away from her, clutching a broken leg that was bent the wrong way in multiple places, the result of Buttercup's ruthless policy of zero compassion for crime. Buttercup took her time, watching with glee how frightened her plaything was.

"No! Please! Don't kill me!" the Italian begged before he met the wall in his futile effort to get away. He pressed himself against it, leaning on it, a look of abject horror in his face. "Mercy!"

Buttercup, however, did not appear to have heard him, coming closer step by step, a victorious, unbridled smirk on her face. She particularly liked the way the once proud and confident mobster was now begging for her to show mercy. She loved how the blood of the gangster's friends was spattered all over her dress, all over her. The warm blood felt good on her skin. She loved the sensation of the bloody teeth in her fist - more souvenir to add to her collection.

"Here, doggy, doggy…" Buttercup taunted the wounded gangster with a vicious smile that'd spread from ear to ear, her voice shivering with ecstasy as she raised a fist, only to feel a hand seizing her by the wrist.

"Buttercup! Stop!" it turned out to be Blossom, who immediately shot a mild heat ray at the hurt gangster to knock him out. "Did you kill all of them?"

"Well…" Buttercup said, unsure if she should tell her sister. They both turned to look at her handiwork. The men on the right stairwell were all motionless except perhaps one, or two. They strewn about the scene randomly, their bodies broken, and it was clear who had twisted them. "Not all of them, I think…"

In the middle of the grand foyer, Buttercup had met her with damage to her dress as well, which was full of holes and scorch marks from the gunshots. There was a rip on her right side where she had sustained the most bullet impacts. Despite this, she didn't look as worn out as Blossom. In fact, she looked energized from all the fighting she had done, from all the manslaughter she had committed.

"It's wrong to kill, Buttercup," Blossom lectured her sister, though the confidence in her voice was drained. "Dad said so himself."

"Even after what they did to us?" Buttercup countered, folding her arms after stealthily depositing her collected teeth into a pocket. "After what they did to Mom? To Blake and the rest? What about Olivia And Mullens? They'd hurt them badly, and we should do the same! It's fair!"

Blossom was actually tempted by thoughts of revenge, and Buttercup was particularly good at that, drawing the darkness from inside her. For a moment, she stayed silent, fighting this darkness in her, closing her eyes as she struggled with it in her.

"No," Blossom simply said.

"No? Blossom! It was because of them that-" Buttercup was about to add another name to the list when Blossom exploded on her.

"DON'T YOU DARE BRING HER UP!" Blossom screamed like a mad girl when she figured out quickly who Buttercup was going to mention. It was so sudden that even Buttercup was taken aback. Blossom, however, on seeing Buttercup's reaction, realized that she had gone too far.

"I- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shout at you. It's… It's just-" Blossom apologized, but she was unable to finish her sentence before her traumatizing losses caught up with her - especially when it concerned HER. She whimpered in pain as she felt fresh tears on her face.

"Blossom... It's not your fault. You didn't know," Buttercup comforted her sister, gave her a hug - she'd changed for the better recently, ever since she'd returned after running away. Blossom couldn't explain it - no one could, really - but she wasn't about to question it. She'd put it down to Buttercup getting wiser with a change of perspective after living on the streets for a while, and it sure beat the old Buttercup who wouldn't hesitate to strangle her.

Unbeknownst to Blossom, Buttercup was wearing a psychotic smile, but Blossom could not see it while she was embracing her.

"I should've listened to her," Blossom cried, into Buttercup's shoulder. Buttercup patted her on the back before Blossom let go, stifling her cries and sucking it up, locking her tears away. "I- I'm fine... We needed saving back then, and t-there's no one to save in this house. You could have tapped those men and they'd still go down. Like what Bubbles probably-"

Just the mere mention of Bubbles' name has had Blossom remember about her other sister's welfare. She'd been so caught up with her own miseries that she'd shamefully neglected the sweetest of them all.

"Buttercup, where's Bubbles?" Blossom asked while she was still drying her cheeks, noticing that her blue-eyed sister was missing. She clutched her head - she could feel a headache coming on. They were invulnerable to (almost all) physical threats from punches and kicks to even anti-tank shells, yes, but their minds were relatively fragile. Blossom remembered that the professor had warned them just as much, and too much pain from enough physical attacks could be bad for them - and Blossom was discovering that, again. She felt like vomiting and fainting. Buttercup held her up. The RPG was the worst - for an instant, it felt as if she really was blown apart, only to remain whole.

"I'm fine," Blossom said. She was able to swallow the urge to vomit, and she looked around the place, the left stairwell, where she'd ordered her to. It pained her every time she had to do that, knowing that Bubbles had never taken well to crime-fighting.

"Bubbles! Where are you!? We gotta go kick some butts!" Buttercup yelled.

They didn't have to search for long. They'd seen her sitting on the steps of the left stairwell, clutching her chest, her face pale, her other hand holding onto the banister as she leaned on it. There was blood where her hand was.

"Bubbles!" Blossom cried as she flew to her. "It's all my fault! I'm so sorry!"

Bubbles lifted her head with difficulty to regard her lovingly. She smiled at her to reassure her, but the fact that she couldn't even speak made it a moot effort. She was a mess. Her dress was similarly powdered with black and riddled with holes. One of her pigtails had come undone, probably ruined by a stray bullet through the ribbon.

Blood was spreading over the chest of her baby blue dress.

"Bubbles! What did they do!?" Buttercup came up next, appearing concerned despite her earlier revelry in destruction.

"Duranium bullet…" Bubbles uttered. "One of them had it. We- we have to go." She tried standing up, but pain shot up in her chest, where she was shot. Her face scrounged up in pain when she tried to move. The bullet hadn't gone in deep owing to her protective bubble, but it was still the mother of all pain. With few things being capable of penetrating the Girls' flesh, whenever something did, it was almost certain to be excruciating.

"Bubbles - just sit down, Bubbles. You can't go on like this," Blossom gently lowered Bubbles back down to the step she was sitting on. Looking at her, she didn't think that Bubbles could continue deeper into the Lombardi mansion. They had fought hard right at the beginning, but there was still more to be done. Knowing the Amoeba Boys and what they had done, the guns they had brought to bear on them was only the beginning. There were harder foes than a bunch of ordinary criminals in there - Blossom was certain. It would be an uphill battle to clear their name and bring justice to the right people, but it had to be done. The wailing of police sirens catching up to them told them so.

"Blossom, we need Bubbles to keep fighting! It can't just be the two of us! Blossom!?" Buttercup said, but Blossom had sunk into herself and she could not hear.

Doubt began filling Blossom when she realized the condition they were in - the condition Bubbles was in, versus the trials ahead. The entire city was against them - but it wasn't always like that. Blossom couldn't help but to think back to the earlier days, when they were loved by all, when, for a time, they had earned their happy ending after fighting off a terrorist attack in Morbucks Industries Research Laboratory.

Reaching deep into her heart, Blossom thought back to those happier times, perhaps to find her strength there…

A/N: Didn't think Rossowinch would post the cover up so soon, so I decided to release The Powerpuff Girls: Declassified a little earlier. Well, I'd say it's a blessing in disguise because it means you guys get to read it early and I get to enjoy going full speed ahead in terms of writing the story earlier, and I honestly couldn't wait to work on it like how I used to work on Project Powerpuff: Declassified.